


Anniversary

by LananiA3O



Series: Batfam Week prompt fills [6]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman: Arkham (Video Games)
Genre: AU, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Imprisonment, Past Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-arkham, Rescue, Scars, Swearing, description of physical injury, nudity (non-sexual)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-06
Updated: 2017-07-06
Packaged: 2018-11-28 18:23:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11423565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LananiA3O/pseuds/LananiA3O
Summary: It's been a year since Jason turned off his tracker and cowl communications to go after Joker on his own, only to get kidnapped by the Clown Prince of Crime. For a full year, Bruce has not found a single sign of his lost son, despite a feverish search and millions of prayers. On the anniversary of Jason's disappearance, fate finally has mercy on Bruce.(AU for Arkham verse in which Bruce actually saves Jason from the Asylum)





	Anniversary

**Author's Note:**

> Sixth, and for now last, Batfam Week prompt fill, written for the following anonymous prompt:  
> http://lananiscorner.tumblr.com/post/162685403548/i-saw-it-mentioned-on-your-prompt-page-but-an-au  
> I know the prompt speaks of Bruce finding Jason during the games, but the statement the prompter was referring to actually refers to pre-Arkham Asylum events, so that is what I have been going with.  
> Takes place a year after Jason's abduction (and consequently after the photo, the brand, and the beginning of the formation of the Arkham Knight. For more detailed headcanon, feel free to read chapter 1-6 of "Red". Mind the warnings.)  
> Please let me know if anything is missing from the tags/age-rating because of the violence in this fic.  
> Yes, I know, this is late AF and I apologize for that.  
> @Anon: I hope this story pleases you :)

Gotham was miserable and so was Bruce.

The rain had been falling all night, unusually thick and heavy and cold for the last third of May, like a curtain of gray ice. The winds had been howling, drowning out sirens and car horns and gunshots. Not that there had been many of those.

It had been a quiet night, and usually Bruce would have been thankful for that, but tonight he scowled in sheer discomfort and displeasure as he led Victor Zsasz back to his cell in Arkham Asylum’s penitentiary. The building was still under construction, not fully capable of holding the insane criminals of Gotham City, as evidenced by Zsasz’s escape two days ago, and that was where part of the displeasure came from. Bruce Wayne had donated good money to this facility, to have it brought up to humane standards while making it securer than any prison in a hundred mile radius, and yet nothing had happened. The rats – both literal and figurative – were still scurrying across the dirty tiles of its floors. The cells were still not fully secure. Half the security panels were not working. He made a mental note to dig into it later.

Later. Not tonight. Any night, but tonight.

The cell door clicked shut and Batman turned to go back the way he had come. Zsasz whimpered quietly against the concrete. The guards whispered quietly as Batman passed. The leaves rustled quietly as he grappled from the entrance of the penitentiary past the visitor center to the intensive treatment facility in the north of Arkham. Quietly. Everything had been _quiet_ tonight and that was where the discomfort came from. It was too _damn_ quiet. In the narrow, spider-infested tunnel leading up to Dead Man’s Point the silence felt even worse. He was alone here. Alone with his thoughts and his dreads and the quiet and it made his skin crawl in a way he hadn’t felt in months.

From the cliff at Dead Man’s Point, the city was clearly visible, bright and vibrant against the gray slush from the heavens above and the blackish-green waters beneath the edge, close enough to make out the individual skyscrapers towering on the other side of the bay, yet too far for any prisoner to swim, especially with the multitude of jagged rocks and the treacherous currents surrounding the island. Of course, that hadn’t stopped many from trying. For some, that had even been the entire point. The spot was called Dead Man’s Point for a reason and Bruce could _feel_ why.

He felt dead. He felt hopeless.

The crashing of the waves should have been soothing, but instead it only served to remind him of that time Jason had nearly drowned on patrol, because Bruce – fool that he was – had neglected to realize that the boy had never been taught how to swim, and it made him think of that same boy’s bones possibly lying in the ground beneath the waters already. _No_ , Bruce balled his fingers into fists. Jason was still alive. He could feel it in his heart.

The lights in the distance should have been encouraging, but instead they only seemed to blind him, obscuring from him the two brave young vigilantes patrolling the city right now, together because he had insisted that none of them go anywhere alone. Ever. Not for one second. Not tonight. He had even swallowed his pride and contacted Nightwing, trying to lure him back to Gotham with a half-lie about an important case he could use a second pair of eyes on, but Dick had seen right through him of course and told him to get lost, in much harsher words. They all had that infuriating talent. Dick. Barbara. Tim. Jason...

Bruce took a deep breath and plunged, savoring the sharp, cutting brush of air past his torso as he hurtled towards the black waves, stretching out the cape and gliding into the hidden grotto at the very last seconds. The call of the water had been tempting, but he could not do that. He had to keep on moving. He had to keep on searching.

The hidden scanner above the fake back end of the grotto beeped almost happily, before the heavy stone door slid into the ground.

“Identity confirmed. Disabling countermeasures. Security deactivated.”

He walked briskly down the uneven corridor of natural rock and hastily cobbled together bricks. The little waterfall just before the hanging bridge of steel mesh barely registered on his shoulders at first, only unfolding its true potential as he ascended the steps to the higher platform – the one with the makeshift Batcomputer – and the water slowly crept into every little cut in his suit.

The cave was still ramshackle by his standards, severely underequipped and too untidy by a mile. Alfred would have wept, had he seen it. So would have Jason, had he been here, but Jason was not here and that was the problem. Bruce groaned in frustration, a rare privilege that the loneliness of this relatively new, hidden home away from home provided, and booted up the computer. As the programs started loading, his gaze fell onto the picture in front of the main screen.

Batman was scowling in it, of course, but Robin was grinning from ear to ear. Not a true smile, but not one of the terrifying smirks he was so easily capable off either. An honest to God, happy with my life, “come at me old man” grin. From Jason.

Today was the anniversary, exactly one year since Jason had disappeared, tricked by Joker into some trap or another using a kindergarten full of butchered children. Jason’s last life sign on the comms had come on May 21st 2011, at precisely 22:27 hours. It was now May 21st 2012, 22:11 hours. 365 days he had spent searching for Jason. 365 days he had prayed for his safety, and yet there was nothing. Not a single sign of life. Not a trace of Robin. Not a hint of the Joker’s whereabouts. Between Nightwing, Batgirl, Tim and Batman, they had combed through the entire city at least once by now, leaving no stone unturned, no lead uninvestigated, but it had amounted to nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, and nothing.

Especially today, the day when he would have expected Joker to put on a show, to taunt him, to dangle his failure to find and save his own son right in front of Batman’s nose, there had been absolutely _nothing_. Re-capturing Zsasz had been the height of excitement tonight and that just felt wrong in every way imaginable. A year gone and they had absolutely nothing to show for it.

Barbara had given up not too long ago. She had flat-out told him so, and Bruce could not blame her. It was... kinder... to imagine that Jason was already dead. Kinder on her. Kinder on Jason. The alternatives were... horrifying, which made it even worse that he still felt this spark of uneasy hope in his heart, that last, slowly dying light of faith that his second Robin, his second _son_ , was still alive. He woke up with that sting at dusk and went to sleep with it at dawn. He felt it every time he looked at his picture (or his _pictures_ for that matter) and he felt even worse every time the Batcomputer gave a delightful “new lead found” ping, only to crush his hopes a second later by sorting the lead into an un-related case.

And, _dear God_ , did he have enough of those. Bruce grimaced at the sheer scale of the material unfolding on his screens. He picked a case at random and started reading, only to realize by the end of the second page that he had already forgotten what the first page had been about. Or perhaps he hadn’t known it to begin with. His brain suddenly had a spectacular amount of trouble deciding whether he had actually _looked_ at the first page.

“Computer, run thermal scan of Arkham Island.”

Bruce slid the cowl off his head and buried his face in his hands. He didn’t want to look at the screen, with its lights that were too bright. He didn’t want to look at the picture with the grinning boy. He wanted to it to stop. He wanted an end. Some twisted, dark part of him was praying for a call from Gordon, informing him that the dead body of a boy in a red vest had been pulled from one of Gotham’s waterways. At least it would be an end. At least then he would be certain.

“Anomaly detected.”

He lifted his head wearily. The computer was programmed to ignore heat signatures where they were expected to be – namely inside the buildings – and catch escapees hiding in the shrubbery instead. He had caught a few of those since installing the system. They thought they were save, crouched perfectly still inside the green, but his systems saw everything.

Right now, they saw a singular figure hushing across the west side pier towards the old sanatorium, currently nothing more than a patch of burnt out earth. It was next on his list after the penitentiary. Bruce watched with a pinch of interest as the figure headed into the ruins and then—

Disappeared?

 _That can’t be right_. He saved the footage and rewound the video with rising interest. Either this stray walker had just coated himself in thermally shielding material or he had gone far underground. The latter option seemed more plausible, given that the basement of the sanatorium had once housed dozens of cells, but those had been abandoned and sealed off years ago. With a resolute frown, Bruce slipped back into his cowl, turned off the computer, and made his way out of the cave. Most likely, one of the Asylum workers was using the old sanatorium as a depot for smuggled goods. It was hardly an interesting case, but it beat sitting around in the quiet, alone with his thoughts of and fears for his lost son.

He left the cave the same way he had come and grappled back into the west of Arkham Island. The heavy rain was already starting to wash away the foot prints in the mud, but the dark splotches of brown on the broken tiles leading into the building were easy enough to make out. Underneath them, more prints – dried and faded – stood out in less detail, but they were there nonetheless. Judging from the varying sizes and patterns, more than one person knew about this path and more than one had walked it over the last few days. He made a mental note to launch a full-scale investigation into the varying states of corruption of Arkham’s staff.

He made another mental note to take another look after Arkham’s criminal background check procedures as he came upon the first splotches of blood halfway down a set of old, steep stairs. He took a sample by sheer force of habit and set his remote link to search the Batcomputer’s database almost as an afterthought, only to nearly topple down the remaining stairs when his cowl brought up the results just two seconds later.

POSITIVE MATCH FOUND. ID: JASON PETER TODD.

This had to be a mistake. He took another sample from the foot of the stairs and ran the query again.

POSITIVE MATCH FOUND. ID: JASON PETER TODD.

Whatever fatigue and weariness had lingered in his bones vanished in an instant. The blood trail was old, but not old enough. Less than a year. Sometime between his disappearance and now, Jason had been here, and there was a good chance the man he was tracking knew more.

Batman followed with swift, but silent steps, a shadow chasing a shadow as he descended deeper, taking turns and stairs in quick succession to trace the trail. It ended next to a heavy desk of half-rotten wood that had been pushed aside to reveal a now open trap door. From the depths below, a deep voice rumbled, angry and frustrated, followed by the sound of a heavy blow connecting with naked flesh.

“Still haven’t learned a thing, have you, you little runt?”

With one last resolute breath, Batman took the last two steps into the dungeon.

The room was large for a cell, but small for any sort of functional use, and covered in tiles from the floor to the ceiling. Aside from a drain on the floor, two tiny grates on the walls and a mirror and a currently switched off light bulb on the ceiling, three quarters of the cell were bleak and empty. The other quarter was characterized by a myriad of newspaper articles pinned to the wall. There were two people in the room – one of them standing next to a metal table in the middle, a heavy baseball bat in hand and a clown mask and a pair of night vision goggles on his face, while the other cowered in the far corner, trapped by a thick iron chain fixed to his neck and the ceiling, clearly recovering from the blow he had just taken as well as what looked like a badly broken right ankle.

He moved forward and struck quickly, one blow to the head to stun, followed by a quick slam into the metal table, which promptly bucked and broke under the force of one-hundred-and-seventy pounds of flesh being slammed into it. He took a second to zip tie the now unconscious thug before flicking on the light switch by the stairs and disabling the x-ray vision of his cowl. What he saw made his blood freeze in his veins.

The young man in the corner was naked but for the chain around his neck and a brace around his right foot and shin. His skin was eerily pale except for the hundreds of scars marring its surface. _Cuts. Welts. Acid burns. Heat burns. Large-surface abrasions. Multiple bruises and contusions. Jagged lines from serrated blades. Irregular, circular scars all over his feet and calves._ His hair was a mess of matte black tresses, except for the dust and grime and blood that had dried in them. Underneath the thin bangs on the left side, a fresh burn scar stood out in horrifying clarity: a branding of the letter J.

“Jason?” The shudder that went through the captive was almost imperceivable, but it was there nonetheless, together with a tiny hitching of breath and a minute increase in heart rate. However, it was the weary lifting of the scarred head, the pale, glacial blue of the bloodshot eye between the hair and the hideous brand that gave him all the confirmation he needed. Bruce’s heart jumped. “Jason!”

His rush to free his son was met with a well-aimed, if weak, sweeping kick that knocked his legs straight out from underneath him. Jason was on him in a second, one hand clasped firmly around Bruce’s throat, choking with what little strength it had left, while the other came down in a fury of focused, but weak punches. He caught one fist in his left hand, then wrangled the other off his throat with his right, easily. Up close, it was horrifyingly clear just how much weight, how much muscle Jason had lost, but then again, that had never stopped him.

Nothing had ever stopped Jason. Not even a full _year_ in captivity.

The headbutt was as sudden and sharp as it was predictable and unrefined, but Bruce was not surprised. He had seen that side of Jason a long time ago. Desperate, instinctive, feral, single-mindedly focused to the point of self-damaging. Up until now, he had hoped he had buried it. Twenty-two months he and Alfred – and Barbara, Dick, and Lucius – had spent teaching this haunted boy how to trust, how to slowly let go of the despair that had previously clung to every day of his life.

It had all been for nothing, and the thought broke his heart. At the same time, it spurred a fire inside of him, hot, unbridled rage for the man who had done this to him. He would _break_ Joker. He would put that animal in a cast from his toes to his brows, even if it was the last thing he would ever do. Not right now though.

_Prioritize._

He pushed and twisted sharply, reversing their positions just as Jason tried to withdraw his hands to get more freedom to move. Bruce used the distance between them to turn Jason around, pressing the cold, butchered skin of his back against the even colder Kevlar fiber of Batman’s suit, and the short yelp that escaped the cracked lips as a particularly painful looking, wide and irregular scar connected with the hardened bat symbol stabbed right through his heart.

_Focus._

There was no time for self-pity. He brought Jason’s wrists together quickly, crossing them in front of his stomach and pinning them there with one arm, while hooking the other around his son’s throat as gently as he could, and pinning his thrashing legs with his own before he’d do any more damage to that ankle. Completely immobilizing someone without hurting them was never easy, but it was especially challenging if “someone” happened to be a panicked, but trained to perfection sixteen-year-old. Bruce took a deep breath before resting his head right next to Jason’s.

“It’s alright, Jason. It’s just me. Stand down, Robin—“

“Don’t call me that!” His voice was hoarse, as if he had gargled razor blades and vodka, but there was a fire burning underneath it. “That’s not who I am!”

“Yes, it is.” Bruce willed the frustration that was starting to crawl up inside him back down into the depths from whence it had come and took a deep breath. “You are Robin. I am Batman. You are safe—“

“I’m not falling for your bullshit!” The thrashing – or at least the attempts at that – continued. “You’re not real! Where’s the other clown you dressed up, huh? Where’s your precious Robin? Where’s your damn cattle prod or acid or whatever else you brought along this time? Give me half a chance and I swear I’ll break both your fucking necks!”

Bruce counted to ten silently as he tightened his hold and did a quick spot check. It took him less than two seconds to find both Jason’s elbows riddled with puncture wounds. He made a mental note to check a blood sample for hallucinogens at the cave later. For now, Jason didn’t need Batman. He needed Bruce Wayne.

“You stole the tires off the Batmobile.” He pressed his mouth closer to Jason’s ear. “You had already removed three when I got there and you had just come back for the last. For your first Christmas, Alfred gave you a block of sketching paper and a set of pencils and you’ve been drawing ever since. The pictures are all over your room. You painted the Batmobile red on a prank once. Together with Nightwing. Ten months after I had taken you in, he came back home to me to scream at me for being a failure. Two weeks later I took you with me on a business trip. Do you remember where to, Jason?”

The boy in his grasp swallowed hard. Bruce could feel it through the fabric between his arm and Jason’s throat. What came out was little more than a whisper.

“Rome.”

“Rome,” Bruce confirmed with a hint of a nod and the faintest trace of a smile as the memory climbed back to the surface from the depths of his mind, bitter and sweet at once. “You loved Rome. The warmth. The sunshine. The food. The Sistine Chapel—“

“Ponte Sant’Angelo...”

“Ponte Sant’Angelo. You loved that bridge.”

It was as if a switch had been flicked, and Bruce thanked every single one of the angels on that bridge as he watched and felt the tension drain from Jason’s limbs.

“Bru—Batman...”

“Bruce,” he whispered straight into his son’s ear, as he followed his gaze to the unconscious thug on the ground. “Don’t worry about him. He’s unconscious and he’s not going anywhere.” He released Jason’s legs first, careful not to touch the broken ankle, then his wrists, and finally his throat. The cape came off in one quick swish and he draped it over the marred body of his son as well as he could. “ _We_ are leaving.”

Jason was almost impossibly light as Bruce picked him up, one arm under his knees, the other supporting his back. The fact that he was trembling like a leaf from the damp cold of this tomb of a cell did not help. The only thing that did not shake was his stare as it fixated on the wall with the newspaper clippings. Bruce spared them little more than a passing glance, but it was sheer willpower, the utterly prioritizing desire to get his son out of this place that kept his feet moving forward and his breath even.

Even a quick glance at the headlines – all of them related to Batman and Robin – had been enough to tell him what the problem was. Those were new headlines. Two, three, maybe up to six months old at best. Not Bruce and Jason. Bruce and Tim. He looked down at the tired, bloody face of the boy he had sworn to protect and care for as if he were his own flesh and blood and felt sick to his stomach.

Jason did not make a sound. He did not flinch. He did not blink. A thought was brewing in the boy’s mind – _or a hundred,_ Bruce thought sourly – as they escaped from the hidden vault into the hallways, up narrow, cracked stairs and back to freedom. A thought was brewing, and only the feeling of the rain pelting against his face seemed to disturb it even in the slightest.

“We’re almost there,” Bruce tried to reassure him as he stepped out into the cold night air. “You’re free now, Jason.”

Bruce had been busy debating whether to take him to the Batcave at Dead Man’s Point – closer, but under-equipped – and call in the Batwing, or to take him back to the Batmobile – farther, but more familiar and a straight route back to the manor and Alfred – when he realized that a new sound had joined the rain and the distant rumbling of approaching thunder. Jason was muttering under his breath.

“Jason?”

The change was instantaneous. Suddenly, there was a wild fire in those pale eyes. A quick hand reached for his utility belt, retrieving a batarang with fast fingers and slashing straight at Bruce’s throat. He dodged backwards on sheer reflex and Jason immediately used the opportunity to gather what strength and momentum remained in his body to topple both of them over, weasel out of Bruce’s grasp, and straddle him once more, this time with the batarang to Batman’s throat.

“Free?!” He practically spat out the word, a dark, pained sound that seemed to be at least half an octave lower than Jason’s usual voice. Most of all, it was cold. Completely devoid of empathy. Completely devoid of _Jason_. “Free from what, you son of a bitch!? You left me to rot in this hellhole for _a YEAR_ with that bastard!”

The quick flicker of his gaze to the brand was completely involuntary and lasted less than a second, but his attacker caught it nonetheless. Bruce tried to bring up his hands to wrestle away the blade only to find his wrists trapped by Jason’s feet. He considered powering through the weak stomp anyway and dismissed the thought almost immediately. _Not with the current shape of Jason’s ankle._

“Look at me, Batman!” The brand was right in front of him now, together with the multitude of scars across his face. Fine, pointed lines. Like from the edge of a batarang. “Look at what he did to me, just to get to _you_! And what did you do in the year that I was here, huh? Throw some parties, bash a few skulls, and – oh, that’s right – you _replaced me_!” Jason’s lips curled into the widest slasher smile Bruce had ever seen on him as he noticed the subtle twitch of recognition. “Oh, I know about him! How long did it take you to replace me, huh? A month? A week? I trusted you and you just left me to die!” The blade pressed closer. Bruce could feel it tear through the suit, pressing against his skin. “Well, congratulations, _Bruce_! It worked. Do you see that on my fucking face? Joker owns this little pathetic runt now, but he _doesn’t_ own me! And once you are dead, there’ll be no more Jason Peter ‘Disappointment’ Todd. I’ll bury both of you in the dirt! Robin’s dead already!”

“If he were, you’d have killed me already.” Bruce swallowed hard. This wasn’t Jason talking. He wasn’t sure who or _what_ it was. All he knew was that it was not Jason. And that he would break Joker’s face for this. “Jason is my _son_. _You_ are my son, Jason. Nothing Joker has done can change that. He doesn’t own you. He never will. And you were _never_ a disappointment.”

There was so much more he wanted to say, so much more that needed saying, but the words were stuck in his throat. With a deep breath, Bruce closed his eyes and forced his fists to uncurl, his muscles to relax. Maybe whatever monster Joker had created was really going to kill him. God knew he deserved it. Maybe he was not. In the end, it would not matter. Jason was free now. It had taken too long and come at too high a cost, but he was alive and unrestrained and that was all that mattered. Whatever judgment was going to come to Bruce, he would accept it.

“I’m sorry, Jason.”

The blade trembled against his throat, drawing the thinnest and shortest line of red from where it touched his skin on the right side. Bruce didn’t feel it. All he felt was that stare of sheer murder, as it was muddled by confusion and conflict. When Jason spoke again, his voice was high and small once more.

“I turned off my tracker and my cowl, Br—Batman...”

“Bruce.” He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Dick would kill him if he did.

_Jason doesn’t need a stone-faced fountain of discipline and disapproval, Bruce, he needs a goddamn father!_

He needed Jason to understand this. He was not just Robin. He was not expendable. He was not replaceable.

“You don’t need to prove yourself to anyone, Jason. I don’t blame you. It’s not your fault that I failed you.”

“Bruce?”

Jason’s voice was less than a whisper now, but it was the look that haunted his eyes that tore Bruce’s heart to pieces, as if the full scale and weight of what he had just said and heard, of what he had very nearly done, had finally hit him. His hand shook as he withdrew the batarang and threw it into the bushes, before scuttling backwards clumsily. Before Bruce even had the time to think of shouting a warning, his right foot had set down hard on the ground, causing an audible crack and tearing a loud howl of agony from Jason as he curled in on himself, cape wrapped tightly around him.

“Don’t move, Jason. I’ll take you home to Alfred.”

It took Bruce every ounce of control in his body not to bolt up immediately and jump to inspect the injury. Instead, he rose slowly, hands stretched out, palms up, as he approached the shivering boy curled up on the leaves just outside the sanatorium. The invocation of Alfred’s name seemed to have put a glimmer of hope back into his eyes at least, and Bruce latched onto that as he scooped him up once more.

This time, Jason practically burrowed into the carry, and for a moment Bruce couldn’t help but see the scrawny, underfed, growth-stunted thirteen-year-old he had picked up almost three years ago. Jason hid his face between the cape and Bruce’s chest as they passed by the confused guards by the gate between Arkham West and the Arkham mansion, but Bruce couldn’t have cared less. Let them wonder and gossip. Jason owed no one even a single word.

The Batmobile was right where he had parked it, just inside the gate to the grounds of the Arkham mansion.

“Deactivate counter measures. Authorization, Batman. Open.”

The roof to the passenger compartment slid open with a quiet swish. Getting Jason settled into the seat while wrapped in the cape, without further injuring his leg, was a challenge in and of itself, but Bruce did not rush. He had had to wait a year to bring his son home. He would not screw it up now. As he moved over to the driver’s side to get in, Jason seemed to sink into his seat. His head was angled upwards, eyes fixated on the clouds above their heads and the rain that fell, deep breaths drawing air through what was definitely a broken nose and a mouth that was likely a few teeth short of a full set, as if this was the first time he had ever seen the sky, or felt rain, or smelled fresh air.

_The first time in a year, at least._

Bruce waited for another minute, pointedly ignoring the rain pooling in the car, before closing the hood once more, and with it, Jason’s mouth and eyelids. _Resigned to more dank darkness._ With a deep sigh, Bruce activated the comms. His first call was to Gordon, informing him of the unconscious thug in the sanatorium and insisting that Gordon send one of his own men, not Arkham staff, but someone he trusted, to pick him up and secure the scene. His second call was to the Batcave underneath the manor.

“Alfred.” Jason’s eyelids lifted slowly. There was fatigue in his eyes, but it wasn’t the only thing clouding his view. Bruce could see him bite his lip in trepidation. “I need you to prepare the med bay. X-ray, fracture treatment, painkillers. Potential hypothermia treatment.”

Alfred sighed deeply. “Do I even wish to inquire what you have done to yourself this time, Master Bruce?”

“It’s not for me.” And now Bruce was biting his lip, too. “I found Jason.”

Alfred blinked once, then twice. “Excuse me, sir, I must have misheard you. For a moment I thought you had said that you had... found Master Todd?”

“You heard right.”

“My god!” The change was almost terrifying, unnoticeable for a casual observer, but Bruce could hear the urgency, the hope, the sheer joy swinging underneath the voice, and he could see it in Alfred’s eyes. “Is he alright?”

“Not the word I’d use, but I’m pretty sure I’m still _alive_ ,” Jason blurted out seemingly half-dazed before Bruce even had a chance to react. Alfred’s jaw line was set somewhere between a shocked drop and an exhilarated smile.

“Good heavens! Master Todd, it is a blessing to hear your voice! I shall ready the med bay right away. And dinner. And a shower. And a bed.”

Jason almost smiled. “You’re a blessing, Alfred.”

 _Yes, he is_ , Bruce thought, as he took one last look at his long-lost son before revving up the engine and setting off on the fifteen-minute drive back to the manor.

_But the greatest blessing is you._


End file.
